The estimate of regional balances of payments in Croatia

Petar Filipić, University of Split, Faculty of Economics, Split, Croatia

AbstractNeither the region, as part of the state, nor regional development has occupied the centre of attention in the theory of international trade. There are several reasons, both theoretical and methodological, as well as entirely practical, including the want of any adequate statistics, particularly those necessary for the construction of Croatian regional balances of payments. Accordingly, there are several objectives to this work. After the introduction in which reference is made to the limitations of the running of individual regional economic policies, comes a chapter in which the content of an ideal regional balance of payments is defined. On the way from the ideal to the objective content of regional balances of payments, that is, one reflecting the available data, many methodological problems had to be solved and suitable statistics set up. In the sequel, the analysis of the balances of payments reveals a whole scale of regions that are negative or positive in terms of foreign currency. Although the quantities of the individual balances and items are interesting in themselves, it is important to understand that the different regional exposures to monetary policy possibly require a selective approach from economic policy. At the end, making use of the regional balances of payments, the influence of the depreciation of the kuna on the gross domestic product of the regions is analysed. It is established that in some hypothetical depreciation, if foreign currency transactions were treated ceteris paribus in relation to other economic aggregates, there would be important gains and losses, which would lead to ever greater developmental inequality in Croatia.